Some Quick Notes from Leadville

Since I'm leaving for the British Virgin Islands tomorrow and won't get a chance for a couple weeks to post any pics or a summary on Leadville, I thought I would send out the following notes which I mostly copied from an email I sent to my coach:

Actual finish time was 11:30:15, which was of course better than the 12 hr finish required to get the coveted belt buckle!

Many people were talking about the bottle neck at the beginning of the race, and were worried about how much time they were losing to it... I felt just the opposite, it was a nice easy pace for the first climb and amazingly my HR never got out of hand, (especially considering it was around 170-180 for the Firecracker and the Silver Rush), I felt good and stayed calm and steady around 155 bpm for first couple hours. I would also have to say I was well prepared for this race and most likely made significant performance improvements in the last few weeks as I felt I rode stronger than I have all summer!

I'm sure you heard it rained for the first couple hours and was cold, I'm really not sure where I came up with the strength to make it through that, especially when I could no longer feel my hands or feet, then if that wasn't enough I nailed a tree at the bottom of powerline while attempting to go around the huge water crossing! I hit the tree branch hard enough to knock me off the bike and I nearly face planted in the water crossing, I was one step away from falling in -it was close! I nearly passed out it hurt so bad, it was another 20 minutes before I could even think straight. fortuneately the arm was still useful for holding the handlebar but that was about it, I couldn't lift it much farther than 6 inches from my waist... That was all the bad luck I had, from there on out the race went well, I didn't drink as much as I had planned, but evidently still drank enough, food was much tougher to eact than I expected and I will be changing my plan for next year. I had a few logistical/planning errors, but overall everything worked out well!

Amazingly my arm feels nearly fine today, which is good for the sailing trip as I was worried about whether or not I would be able to do any scuba diving... It is disappointing however that for as bad as it hurt in the race there really doesn't seem to be any damage, this certainly casts a shadow of doubt on how much I really suffered in the race due to the arm...

It certainly was getting a bit scary as to whether or not I was really going to make the 12hr cut-off, around hour 8 is when I really started to fade, I think this is when the good nutrition/hydration plan really came into play (and training), although I was fading I never actually ran out of power, it always seemed like I was getting a second wind and while I was definately slowing, I know I still climbed the final pavement section faster than I did on the first day of the CTS camp!

When Lance came by, he was a flash, he was already down the Columbine climb when I saw him, and we were on a flat section, I was probably doing 18 mph and most likely Lance was doing 25+
Also, on Friday CTS hosted a pre-race dinner where we dropped off our drop-bags for the aid stations. I got to meet Chris Carmichael, so that was also pretty cool.

My friends took tons of pictures, but doubt I'll get any posted until after I get back from the sailing trip.